In Forever Mine, Paul
Schrader's latest film, Joseph Fiennes plays Alan, who, in 1973, is
a university student working as a cabana boy at a posh Miami
beachfront hotel. There, he meets Ella (Gretchen Mol), the beautiful
wife of Mark (Ray Liotta), an aspiring politician, and he becomes
immediately and totally besotted with her. They were fated to meet.
After the inevitable Steamy Encounter or two, Alan confronts Mark
with the news: not only are he and Ella meant to be together, it is
their "purpose". Mark, the outraged husband, doesn't see
it that way, and puts a stop to things.
Jump forward fourteen years, and
Alan reemerges with a new face (reconstructed, after a horrible
mishap), a new identity (a wealthy entrepreneur with contacts in
both Central America and the U.S.), and a request to help the
unwitting Mark, now a New York City councilman, avert political
scandal.
The picture (which was completed in
1999, and is having its U.S. premiere on the "Starz"
channel this month) has been likened to having antecedents in film noir,
but it's actually closer to Frederich Durrenmatt's dark, European
story, "The Visit", where a wealthy woman returns to the
village that cast her out when she was young in order to use her
money and power to settle some scores. The second part of Forever
Mine starts out promisingly, but it would have been better if
the first half worked. Fiennes and Mol have no chemistry together
on-screen, and they don't fare so well on their own, either. Fiennes
gives one of the most amorphous lead performances I can recall
seeing in any recent film, and that's when you can understand what
he's saying. He affects a Latino accent for his new identity, but
he's so soft-spoken beforehand that you can't tell where his
character comes from or how he sounded to begin with. Mol is
sweet-looking, but she falls way short of coming across as either a
four-alarm object of desire (no matter how much the filmmakers make
her up or light her to look like Lana Turner), or as a woman who's
sinking into boredom and desperation because of an ill-suited
marriage.
Review by Gregory Avery · Nitrate Online
